"How's the cable runnin' going today, sweetie pie?" he asked. "If you've got time, I know a great little spot on deck 14 where we can have some? alone time."
She smiled nicely and nodded, murmuring something unintelligible and trying not to meet his eyes. She did this deliberately, hoping he would think she just didn't want to talk and that he would go away. But she did it every day, and it never worked-perhaps a new strategy was in order. She cleared her throat.
"Hi," she said.
His face burst into a lascivious smile. She frowned. This tactic wasn't working either. In fact, it seemed to be having the opposite of the desired effect. She wasn't good at thinking on her feet, but the third option she had come up with was by far the worst: telling him point blank to leave her alone. It might, however, be the only option she had left.
"Why don't you ever talk to me?" he asked.
She gave him a blank look. She talked to him every day.
"I mean," he amended, stepping closer to her, "you say 'hello,' but that's all. You never ask me how I'm doing or what it's like in the plumbing world."
She shook her head and stepped back.
"It's because I don't care." She turned back to her cables. "And I wish you would leave me alone."
There. She did it. A brief sense of elation filled her as she felt proud for standing up for herself, but was quickly replaced by fear. What would he do? What would he say? She hated this junction with every ounce of her being, and she knew that the feeling had nothing to do with the cables. Perhaps more accurately, she thought, she hated him.
"What do you mean you don't care? And go away?" he asked, stepping closer to her. She could feel his breath on her neck, and though she wasn't looking at him, she imagined he had a frown of some sort on his face.
"I'm sorry," she said, moving away from him and down the line. "I have to finish running these cables."
Please go away, please go away, she thought desperately. She walked a little faster, hoping he would get the hint.
He made a growling sound in the back of his throat.
"Damn you, think you're better'n me! You think you can tell me what to do?" he exclaimed, grabbing her arm so tightly she feared he might leave bruises. She cowered as he glared down at her.
"You can think that alright," he continued, little bits of spittle flying from his lips, "but I'll show you! I hope the ghost gets you!" He released her arm with an angry thrust and then stomped down the hall away from her, back towards the steam room.
White Rabbit swallowed. That was the worst insult anyone on the ship could give, and although she wasn't afraid of the ghost itself, she was afraid of Logger and what he was planning to do.
***
It all happened the day the virus got loose. It ate up the systems of a thousand battle ships and left hundreds of thousands of people running out of oxygen, running out of food, and inevitably flying at great speeds towards the nearest star or planet without the ability to steer. No one knew where the virus had come from, but it was transmitted from ship to ship through wireless communications, and spread through each ship's systems like virtual wildfire.
Her ship had just been lucky.
While the other ships were losing control, the Admiral of the Paka Fleet, where she lived, had been forced to shut down all of the fleet's wireless capabilities in order to deal with some teenage vandals. They had written a program that made pop-ups of inappropriate content appear all over the place-private computers, public consoles, even on the computers that did the calculations for speed and jumping. Because it was interfering with the navigation and jump systems, the Admiral had ordered all ships in the fleet to shut down temporarily, while the computer technicians figured out the origin of the pop-ups.
The Admiral had been furious that day, but everyone was secretly glad: a little virus had saved them from a big one, had saved them from burning up in the heart of a white dwarf.
While the ship was down, the Admiral received a radio transmission begging for help from the nearest out-of-control fleet. There was nothing he could do, but he never turned the ship's wireless communications systems back on again. That was when White Rabbit got promoted to a cable runner, tasked with making the ship run with wires, instead of without.
White Rabbit loved her work, but sometimes she got sick of wires. She followed them, she fixed them, she hid them in nooks and crannies and corners. When she got bored, she would sometimes bend and twist them into colourful sculptures or words. Then she'd untwist and coil them neatly the way they were supposed to go. After work, she would head back to her deck and find her room, where she would discover that her Dad had left on another business trip to some other ship in the fleet, and her two sisters wanted her to make dinner, because she was, as they said, "the best cook."
So she would cook, but only because it was better than doing nothing. Then she would read for a while and head to bed, drifting softly to sleep to the sound of her sisters watching reruns of their favourite vid-decks.
The next morning, she would wake up to the sound of artificial birds, rouse her sisters, and head back to run more wires.
But that was tomorrow, and today was today. She still had to finish the emergency cables in the stern of the ship, around the drive units. Quite the opposite from the steam room, the stern was her favourite part of the ship.
In the stern she felt safe.
Everyone who knew this found it quite odd, because everyone else felt just the opposite.
"It's spooky down there!" they said.
"I wouldn't go down there for a hundred Euros!" they said.
"I think it's haunted!" they said. "I heard voices once!"
"That's where the ghost lives!" they said.
White Rabbit didn't care what everyone else said. The small spaces made her calm because she always knew where she was and where she needed to go. In the darkness, no one else could see her, and she could always hear when someone else was approaching far before they heard her. The voices that people heard? she heard them too, but she talked back. And the hazy figures people saw, she saw them too. Plus, it wasn't voices and figures-it was just one voice, and just one figure.
"Hello?" she said softly. "I'm back."
"White Rabbit." The voice emanated from the blackness. Bits of light flickered in and out of her peripheral vision. The Ghost was trying to become visible. He often tried, and some days all she heard was his voice, while other days his entire blue form became visible.
The Ghost, she had learned, though the sound of his voice tended to hiss in and out like a bad comm, liked beaches. She herself had never been to a beach, as she was born and raised aboard this ship, but it sounded nice. The voice also liked pie and listening to music. Better yet, the voice liked to read, and could talk at length about many of the ancient texts White Rabbit had found in the library.
Perhaps her favourite thing about the Ghost was that it so terrified anyone that came near. Whenever Logger came to visit while she was working near the voice, the voice would say, "those eyes that burn? and if he has to kill a thousand men, then he will kill and kill again!" and then laugh. White Rabbit knew they were just lyrics from a very, very old Earth opera, but Logger didn't read.
She still cherished the memory of Logger's wide eyes and terrified grunts as he had fled from the dark tunnels towards the lighted and warm interior of the ship.
"How are you today?" she asked.
"It?. very cold? good," he said.
She translated that as, "It is very cold in here, but I am good," based on things he had said to her in the past and the length of time that came between words. She often had to translate, as many of his words didn't come through very clearly.
"I'm sorry you are cold," she replied.
"What? working? ing today?" he asked.
"I am doing the same thing I do every day," she said. "Just checking the wires, and then checking more wires and more wires. I love wires, and I hate them. They are so unchanging, but so comforting."<
br />
"I feel the same? memory foam?"
White Rabbit had looked this one up last time he said this. Memory foam was a type of malleable mattress that conformed to the body, used several centuries ago.
"I looked that one up," she said. "It is a type of mattress used a very long time ago. How old are you anyway?"
"I? year 2321 to Achieng and Otieno? Kenya."
"Wow!" White Rabbit was stunned. "You are over 500 years old!" She shook her head, and then realized she had stopped working. She quickly bent over and began examining the wires once more.
"...not old? trapped." The voice was fading more.
"You're fading again," White Rabbit said. "I'll talk to you when you get back."
"...back?" the voice seemed to echo, and White Rabbit finished her rounds in silence.
***
The next morning, White Rabbit rolled out of bed, sleepy but satisfied. She had stayed up far too late reading a modern translation of an old text from the nineteenth century, but she hardly even thought about it as she rushed to get ready. Today was a red-wire day. That meant they were live and any screw-ups could cost time, money, and possibly lives.
Her sister, Ann, waved at her as she went out the door. "Say hello to Logger for me!" she called.
White Rabbit scowled at her. Ann knew that White Rabbit hated Logger, but for the love of the fleet, couldn't understand why. "He's so charming!" she had said one day. "And handsome! You should feel lucky that he's interested in a shy thing like you! You silly girl."
White Rabbit had stormed into her room and refused to talk to Ann about it after that. What was the point, after all? Everyone loved Logger. Except her.
She stood in a line with the other ten cable runners, her white uniform starched to perfection. Mac, their boss, was giving them a lecture on speed, safety, and accuracy.
"Daph!" he called.
"Sir!" Daph yelled back.
"What's the number one rule?"
"The number one rule, sir: DON'T TOUCH THE WIRES."
"GOT THAT EVERYBODY?" Mac was shouting now. "WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME SOMEBODY TOUCHED A WIRE?"
"PADDY GOT SICCED!" everyone shouted in unison. "PADDY GOT SICCED."
White Rabbit always whispered instead of shouted. She was afraid that if she shouted at that wrong time, everyone would hear her and notice her. Particularly when they were shouting about Paddy. Paddy was a wire runner who got fried when he put his hand across an entire strip of hot wires. There was no consensus about whether or not it was suicide, sabotage, or an accident, but all three were viable options.
"Now go!" Mac shouted, and the wire runners took off into their respective directions. "Except you." He turned and pointed at White Rabbit. She froze, one foot in the air.
As soon as the room had cleared out, he crossed his arms and frowned at her. "I have been getting complaints about you being rude to some of the plumbers-one in particular. Logger. Know him?"
A terrified look crossed her face.
"Yeah, I thought so."
White Rabbit gulped. How was she supposed to say that it wasn't her being rude, but him? It wasn't her fault! He was the creep! He was the one that always followed her around and tried to get her to talk to him. It wasn't fair.
"I?" she tried to say, but Mac talked right over her.
"Logger is a very respectable plumber and highly regarded across all departments, though it shouldn't matter-you shouldn't be treating anyone that way! Do you understand me? Now, because I can't have you causing problems with other departments, I'm taking you off the red wires. Daphne will take your place. Instead you will be striking ghost lines."
"Ghost lines?" she whispered. She didn't think those were real.
"Yes, they're real," Mac said, sighing in exasperation. "I'll show you where to get started. Most of them are hidden in the closed tunnels, so you'll need some keys and a nice big wrench. Follow me."
She fumed as she followed Mac through the corridors of the ship. She didn't do anything! It wasn't her fault! Logger was the jerk-he was the one that was harassing her! All she had done was try to stand up for herself, but apparently it was her job to let big, ugly louses make unseemly remarks and grab at her whenever she walked by. She wished desperately that she was braver, that she could work up the courage to stand up for herself. After all, wasn't she a bit old to be behaving like a cowardly child?
Mac led her to the brig, hidden away in the deepest corner of the ship. White Rabbit rarely came here. It wasn't part of her rounds, and she didn't like being near the prisoners. Rowdy, crude, and unkempt, they had a nasty habit of yelling obscenities as people walked by. Some people argued that the prisoners didn't deserve to be here-that their sentences were too harsh for their crimes or that they hadn't done anything wrong at all. But White Rabbit felt that if that were true, they wouldn't be so awful and rude when people (like her) needed to walk through.
Down here, her arms and head felt heavy and tired. Gravity was stronger this deep in the ship, as the design of the gravitation magnets were calibrated to simulate ideal gravitational conditions in the living quarters on the higher decks. As a result, the gravity increased in the lower parts of the ship, just enough to be noticeable.
"Line runners, here for maintenance," Mac said to the guard on duty.
"IDs, please," the guard said.
White Rabbit pulled her ID out and handed it to the guard, keeping her eyes averted towards the floor.
"Thank you." The guard wrote something down in a book, and then unlocked the barred door that blocked entrance from the brig into the rest of the ship. He waved them through.
White Rabbit kept close to Mac's heels as he led her deeper into the ship. The cells started almost immediately past the main gate, and angry prisoners began to call out on either side.
"Got any food?" one woman asked. "They make us eat rats down here!"
White Rabbit had heard of this before. Prisoners tried to make out that the conditions were inhumane, to get more people advocating for their release. They said awful things, but they were really just making their situation sound worse than it was. She kept her head down.
"Hey there, pretty lady," a man jeered as she walked by. "I got a nice soft bed you can hunker down in, if you're so inclined."
White Rabbit swallowed nervously and kept her eyes focused on Mac's shoes.
"Where ya'll off to so quick-like?" another prisoner hollered. "Us prisoners, well, we just get a mite lonely from time to time! What'dya say to a quick conversation?"
Talking-this was another strategy. Rumors up top said that prisoners would try to get you to talk because they just wanted to shove propaganda down your throat, to convince you to help them escape. White Rabbit closed one eye, and kept the other trained on Mac's heels. The fabric on his shoes was red, dirty, and well-worn.
"You up-toppers think you can come down here and ignore us? We are people too!" Someone reached out of their cell and grabbed White Rabbit's sleeve. She gasped and pulled away, walking even closer to Mac's heels. Despite how furious she was with Mac, she preferred his proximity to theirs.
"Yeah," another prisoner chimed in. "We're people too! We're people too!"
This seemed to be a mantra among the prisoners, for almost immediately, they all began to chant as if one: "WE'RE PEOPLE TOO! WE'RE PEOPLE TOO!" Then guards swarmed in from nowhere, banging on the bars of their cells and yelling back.
"YOU AREN'T PEOPLE," one of the guards yelled. "YOU'RE RATS."
Almost without realizing she was doing it, White Rabbit reached up and stuck her fingers in her ears. The noise around her dulled, and she felt an immediate sense of relief.
Then, Mac turned down another hallway and the shouting of the prisoners faded behind them.
She kept her head down and eyes focused on Mac's shoes until she ran smack into him.
"Watch where you're going!" Mac barked. "You'll start here. The tunnel will take you down to the bilge, and you'll come out underneath the rudder." He pull
ed out a wrench and loosened a nut on a panel covering a hole in the prison wall.
White Rabbit frowned. This seemed unsafe. If a prisoner got out of their cell, they could escape the prison through this one stupid hole.
"The ghost lines are mostly painted white, although they're so dirty at this point that they're difficult to see. Your job is to make sure firstly that they're not live, and secondly, that they are disconnected at every junction. But make sure you check both ends of a cable before you disconnect it. We don't need any explosions by removing power from a piece of machinery that hasn't been shut off."
Of course this made sense, but White Rabbit felt her stomach drop. This meant backtracking any time she found a live wire. Just the walking back and forth could take hours and hours, not counting the process to determine the state of the wire and to disconnect it. If she got lucky, there wouldn't be any live wires at all, so maybe it wouldn't matter.
"You got all the equipment you need?" Mac asked.
White Rabbit opened her work bag and let him look inside.
"Solid," Mac answered. "Take this wrench, so you can get out when you reach the end of the bilge. You understand?"
White Rabbit nodded.
"When you're done down there," Mac continued, "I expect you to apologize to Logger. Can't have you treating other members of this ship like, well, like prisoners. Especially ones as well-respected as Logger. Got it?"
White Rabbit nodded again, a small, red hot bubble of hatred beginning to glow somewhere in her lower abdomen. It wasn't fair!
"Alright, get going! I'm going to have the guards seal this door up after you go down it. Don't need no prisoners managing to slip out of this place." He chuckled. "Wouldn't want you to get stuck down there with one, eh?"
White Rabbit gulped again, eyes wide. She certainly hoped not. A brief wisp of fear flashed through her mind-what if she got stuck down there?-but she quickly decided that she would rather be stuck down there alone then have to come back up through the prison or be near Logger for any amount of time.
She reached up and turned her headlamp on, moving slowly towards the gaping black hole. Then, taking a deep breath, she crawled in. The light illuminated a short tunnel and then another hole in front of her with a ladder sticking up from it.
Spectral Tales Page 10